Cp3 – Metroid prime 2
All posts by Joseph Clarke
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CP2: Tomb radier back cover
CSP 1: Tomb raider front cover
Representation
The Male Gaze –
Coined by Laura Mulvey in 1975, the term ‘the Male Gaze’ refers to the objectifying of women in popular media. Women are commonly sexualised through the use of clothing, camera angles, and movement, in order to satisfy the presumed heterosexual male viewer. There are many examples of the Male Gaze having an impact on modern media. For instance, extraneous nudity by female characters, slow camera pans of women’s bodies, women wearing tight or informal clothing when male characters are appropriately dressed, framing women so their cleavage stays in the frame, using the female body as a prop, a male protagonist, with women characters only as sexual objects. The problem with the male gaze is that I portray women as something for the heterosexual male (or patriarchal society as a whole) to watch, conquer, and possess, rather than understand and respect. Also, as media is so influential in determining culture, regressive representation of women in video games could make the young men and women playing them a misinformed view of sexual politics.
Ways of Seeing – copied from Wikipedia
Ways of Seeing is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name.
The series was intended as a response to Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation TV series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon, and the series and book criticise traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. According to James Bridle, Berger “didn’t just help us gain a new perspective on viewing art with his 1972 series Ways of Seeing – he also revealed much about the world in which we live. Whether exploring the history of the female nude or the status of oil paint, his landmark series showed how art revealed the social and political systems in which it was made. He also examined what had changed in our ways of seeing in the time between when the art was made and today.”
The series has had a lasting influence, and in particular introduced the concept of the male gaze, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting. It soon became popular among feminists, including the British film critic Laura Mulvey, who used it to critique traditional media representations of the female character in cinema.
Example of ‘The Male Gaze’
In the 2007 film, Transformers, Megan Fox (who was just 20 years old during filming) is overly sexualised in order to appeal to heterosexual males.
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Key language
Semiotics
Sign – In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign.
Code – In semiotics, a code is a set of conventions or sub-codes currently in use to communicate meaning.
Convention –
Dominant Signifier – any material thing that signifies, e.g., words on a page, a facial expression, an image.
Anchorage – The term anchorage is used to describe how the combination of elements within a sign fit together and fix the meaning. Anchorage is the way different media language elements combine to help fix the meaning that a producer wants to convey to the audience.
Ferdinand de Saussure
Signifier – n/a
Signified – Signified is a concept, most commonly related to semiotics, that can be described as “the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
C S Pierce
Icon – an icon, which resembles its referent (such as a road sign for falling rocks); (2) an index, which is associated with its referent (as smoke is a sign of fire); and (3) a symbol, which is related to its referent only by convention
Index – An index describes the connection between signifier and signified. With an index, the signifier can not exist without the presence of the signified. For example smoke is an index of fire and dark clouds are an index of rain.
Symbol – Signs where the relation between signifier and signified is purely conventional and culturally specific, e.g., most words.
Roland Barthes
Signification – n/a
Denotation – The most basic or literal meaning of a sign, e.g., the word “rose” signifies a particular kind of flower.
Connotation – The secondary, cultural meanings of signs; or “signifying signs,” signs that are used as signifiers for a secondary meaning, e.g., the word “rose” signifies passion.
Myth – A combination of paradigms and syntagms that make up an oft-told story with elaborate cultural associations, e.g., the cowboy myth, the romance myth.
Ideology – A codes that reinforce or are congruent with structures of power. Ideology works largely by creating forms of “common sense,” of the taken-for-granted in everyday life.
Radical – A piece of media which challenges the common perception of the group its about.
Reactionary – A piece of media which reflects the usual perception of the group its about.
Summer task evaluation
Statement of Intent
In my summer task, I interviewed my sister on her love for movies. The style of the article was meant for an online magazine article, as it featured a picture (go the person being interviewed), text (formatted in the style of an online article), and it was a 5-10 minute read. The article is intended to give an insight into the thought process of a movie critic, whilst also giving appealing takes on some of the interviewee’s favourite and least favourite movies.
Media Language
I did not strictly follow a style model. However, I did draw inspiration from a few different magazines. For instance, the font I used, Cormorant Garamond, is the font used by popular online magazine, The Cut. Also, the format I used is similar to one used in another online article which I studied.
Representation
The article I have written is fairly reactionary because it focuses on movies, which are liked by almost all people. However, you could also argue that the article is radical because the audience it is targeting is quite specific. Most people aren’t aware of who ‘Wes Anderson’ is and almost everyone won’t be familiar with the site mentioned, Letterboxd. Therefore some sections of the interview appeal to the small number of people who are interested in those subjects.
Audience / Platform
The article would be best published in an online magazine because it follows the traditional format of one. The audience targeted in the article is fairly niche. Yes, an article about movies could interest a wide range of audiences, however as I touched on earlier, the subjects looked at in the article may appeal to a slightly more select audience, who are into slighter nerdier film topics.
What kind of company would make your product? What kind of audience would consume it?
An online magazine would be the type of company making my product. The audience most likely to consume it would be movie lovers, who love to study and analyse film techniques as well as write reviews.
Evaluation
Overall, I am pleased with my summer task. I think the interview that I gave my sister was engaging and well-written, and I am also pleased with the picture used of her because I utilised Photoshop to edit a bag of popcorn into her hands. However, after viewing the work of other students in my class, there are a few things that I wish I’d done differently. Firstly, I think the layout is fairly formulaic, and in future, I’d like to get more inventive with it. Also, I think I’d try to include more interesting media techniques, such as composition, editing style, structure, sound design and more. Unfortunately, at the time when I wrote my article, I had little to no knowledge of how to successfully implement these techniques in an aesthetically pleasing manner, and so the end result of the article isn’t quite up to the standard that I hope to achieve in future projects.
summer task – Media
Media forms
| Forms | Characteristics | |
| 1 | television | visual, usually watched in private, usually has ads, usually 30 min – 60 min, non-physical |
| 2 | film | visual (picture), sometimes watched in public, no ads, usually 90 min – 180 min, non-physical |
| 3 | radio | audio, 24 / 7, ads, non-physical |
| 4 | newspaper | visual (text), immediacy (news), ads, physical + non-physical |
| 5 | magazines | visual (text +picture), 5 min – 10 min read, ads, physical + non-physical |
| 6 | advertising and marketing | visual (short text + picture), physical + non-physical, short (one look) |
| 7 | online, social and participatory media | visual (text + picture), non-physical, 24 / 7 |
| 8 | video games | visual, sense, non-physical |
| 9 | music video | visual + audio, 2 min – 5 min, non-physical |
